Another socialist boom and bust in solar in Victoria

Behold, the Victorian Govt are proving yet again that Soviet-style electricity management can crush lives, hopes and wallets. The free market is never as cruel and destructive as one run on “good intentions” or the desire to win virtue-signaling fashion parades.

The invisible hand of the market was replaced with Daniel Andrews whimsy. This might work if he was smarter than the collective brains of 5 million people. Apparently Andrews assumes serfs people don’t understand the true value of solar panels and the benefits of creating jobs in China, so he has mandated glorious subsidies in the hope of getting nice weather one day, and the desperate punters took them up in droves. The industry boomed. But now they’ve temporarily halted the free gifts, orders have disappeared as the free market returns to accurately valuing solar installations. So the workers are being sacked. The rebates will come back again in July, so business-owners somehow need to get a different income stream for two months, survive the turmoil, and then the golden gravy will run again.

As per usual ABC policy, no free market voices were harmed, interviewed or asked to provide comment:

An award-winning Victorian solar company has laid off just over half of its staff after the Victorian Government placed a temporary freeze on a solar panel rebate program.

The $1.3 billion solar homes package started last August and has been so popular that the rebates for this financial year have been fully subscribed.

Since the freeze on new applications came into effect, the work for solar installation companies like Sky Energy Systems of Melbourne has dried up.

The business’s directors, Sam Kent and Ross Howard, said they had no choice but to cut staff when customers started cancelling their orders.

Twenty-five people have been told to finish up work on Friday and another 15 staff could go in two weeks’ time.

Live by government handouts, die by government handouts. Oh the pain:

“Having no sales is like having no oxygen. You can’t breathe. There’s no business so it’s devastating,” Mr Kent said.

What’s a company that “follows a rebate” — another labor voter

As long as businesses are allowed to earn a living entirely dependent on government largess they are a form of “public servant”, a wing of big government with all the entitlement that doesn’t deserve and none of the obligations:

No sales, no business

A petition has been launched on the change.org website calling on the Victorian Government to reconsider the temporary rebate halt.

“Because consumers know that the rebate will return on July 1, they will be holding off making a purchase,” the petition said.

“For these small businesses to survive 15 weeks without sales is unlikely.”

Mr Kent said many other solar companies are based interstate, and use subcontractors in Victoria.

“They’ll disappear interstate until the rebates comeback. They are companies that are basically rebate-based so they follow the rebates,” Mr Kent said.

Making money in Australia increasingly means being a better lobbyist for government masters, not being a better producer of things Australians need or want.

h/t Dave B

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Rating: 9.8/10 (90 votes cast)

Another socialist boom and bust in solar in Victoria, 9.8 out of 10 based on 90 ratings

194 comments to Another socialist boom and bust in solar in Victoria

“As long as governments are allowed to earn a living” – shouldn’t that be businesses?
and “increasing” should be “increasingly”. These errors are the result of the subject matter – the faulty logic of it all is contagious.

This Labor experiment has not been implemented fairly. Those who can afford solar panels via a subsidy and then receive a subsidy on top of that are leeching off the backs of the workers who can’t afford such luxuries. This excess and unearned wealth should be redistributed to the more deserving. Why vote for this capitalist Labor government?

“Individual freedom can only exist in the context of free-market capitalism. Personal freedom thrives in capitalism, declines in government-regulated economies, and vanishes in communism. Aside from better economic and legislative policies, what America needs is a more intense appreciation for individual freedom and capitalism.

“I was born and raised in communist Romania during the Cold War, a country in which the government owned all the resources and means of production. The state controlled almost every aspect of our lives: our education, our job placement, the time of day we could have hot water, and what we were allowed to say.

“Like the rest of the Eastern European countries, Romania was often referred to as a communist country. In school, we were taught it was a socialist country. Its name prior to the 1989 Revolution to overthrow the Ceausescu regime was the Socialist Republic of Romania.

“From an economic standpoint, a petty fraction of property was still privately owned. In a communist system, all property is owned by the state. So if it wasn't a true communist economy, its heavy central planning and the application of a totalitarian control over the Romanian citizenry made this nation rightfully gain its title of a communist country.

Socialism Creates Shortages

“Despite the fact that Romania was a country rich in resources, there were shortages everywhere. Food, electricity, water, and just about every one of life's necessities were in short supply. The apartment building in which we lived provided hot water for showers two hours in the morning and two hours at night. We had to be quick and on time so we didn't miss the opportunity.

“I get it, maybe we didn't need to be fashionable. But we needed to eat.

“Wrigley's chewing gum and Swiss chocolate were a rare delight for us. I remember how happy I was when I'd have a pack of foreign bubblegum or a bar of delicious milk chocolate. I'd usually save them for special occasions.

“Fruity lip gloss, French perfume, and jeans were but a few of the popular items available only on the black market and with the right connections. God bless our black-market entrepreneurs! They made our lives better. They gave us the opportunity to buy things we very much desired, things we couldn't get from the government-owned retail stores which were either half-empty or full of products that were ugly and of poor quality.

“The grocery stores were not any better. I get it, maybe we didn't need to be fashionable. But we needed to eat. So, the old Romanian adage "Conscience goes through the stomach" made a lot of sense.

“During the late 1970s, life in Romania started to deteriorate even more. Meat was hardly a consumer staple for the average Romanian. Instead, our parents learned to become good at preparing the liver, the brain, the tongue, and other giblets that most people in the West would not even consider trying.“

The communists of old weren’t so bright. They owned the resources & means of production which could not ever be sustained. This was how they held power for about 70 years & controlled the population. Didn’t work at all well!
The communists of the new millennium are very “woke”. All they need to do is control the energy that generates the resources & means of production then they control everything & everyone with no effort whatsoever. Exactly how long it will be sustainable remains to be seen! When the bubble bursts however it’ll be mor messy than the collapse of the soviet states & their sattelites.

What needs to be observed about Marxism is that Karl was writing as an outside with no real stake in the system. Sure he talked about Owners and Workers and Owner/Workers and put forward that until Workers owned the means there would be ‘Bad Things’ in society, but where did he himself sit? Owner? Worker? Owner/Worker?

(aside – Marx predicted that the owner/worker or small business owner would become extinct because the pure owner would eat them. He was wrong. Realising he was wrong goes a significant way to understanding why Marxism has failed to work over the years – it is flawed at base principles and cannot work.)

Back to Marx. He was none of these. Marx was an observer from the outside. Not a worker so he didn’t have to worry about where the next meal for his family was coming from. Not an owner so he didn’t stand to lose everything from the change. He was an outsider, a community organiser if you will, seeking to upvote his standard of living without risking everything if the plan went wrong.

This is basically the Ruling Left in a nutshell. They don’t actually invest or own, and don’t actually physically work. They ORGANISE others. There power base is the worker who they have convinced cannot exist without them which is why many of them are so openly union – it lets them control the worker.

The Right on the other hand don’t really want to own and control the worker, they want to exploit them to maximise profits, but they also realise that if you destroy your own market you destroy your own future and that deep down it is bad to be a worker. Stop being a worker and start being a Worker/Owner. If you are good enough to succeed then you will, but you need to actually be ‘good’ and also put the effort in. Handouts are for those who can’t. Those who can are normally lazy or successful.

So, Labor being for the workers? HAHAHHA. Labor has never been for the workers. Labor has been about controlling the workers so the controllers get rewarded. The Right is actually for the workers because people who work tend to get narky at people who don’t pull their own weight and don’t like seeing their tax money being spent on woke handouts for the unemployable.

Remember the early 19thC was an era of putting kids down coal mines to pull the carts, remember Dickens, ‘may I have some more gruel Sir?’ The abuse of young children was appalling. They were pretty bad times so birthed a new wave of anti ‘Owner, Over lord etc.’ good or bad. I think Marx looked at that camp.

When talking about the industrial revolution, you need to remember that the reason that people worked in it, was that the alternatives were worse. Children worked EVERYWHERE in the lower stratas of society, and if you think working in a coal mine is bad,try working outdoors in the winter with neither shelter nor adequate clothing.

Surveys at the time indicated that something like 25% of rural Scots and Irish, and a slightly lesser proportion of English, still lived in windowless huts with dirt floors, which they shared with animals. There was no social security outside of charity. The was no rural paradise from which the working poor were dragged in chains.

Be careful when reading fiction. Dickens was writing novels, not historical research papers.

I was told (not fiction) that in the battle of Trafalgar the powder monkeys were 11 12yo boys as they were small enough to run between the decks! The decks were red to show less blood from the legs blasted of with cannon shells.

You’re right that Dickens was not researching the social conditions of his time but he was still reporting them — the matters set the background of his stories, so he was relatively gentle in his writing about what was around him: he did not include any statistics nor any analysis of the causes of the effects surrounding his society. Nor did he write about The Poor House and the conditions and dastardly deeds therein, nor the Parish Alms, the only form of social welfare then. He was merely setting the scene, painting the fabric supporting his tale.

You could, however, read Dr George Miller’s book. It’s the documentation of his research.

Dr Miller (d. c. 2004) was Professor at the University of London. Queen Mary and Westfield College. He was a member of or the Medical Research Council’s Senior Scientific Staff. His research was into why human longevity had stopped increasing for the majority of people and was declining (it is still on the decline). His research is well worth reading if you can find/obtain a copy.

I have read Marx and Engels (english version) — all three volumes. Yes, it was an effort, they were are bloody boring books. They got it wrong. They didn’t correct themselves until Volume III and, even then, only in one paragraph. Very few who tried to study their works went past Volume I (such turgid writing!), which means the readers missed the author’s correction and couldn’t get it correct themselves. Thus the economies founded, based on these works, soon foundered.

MILLER, George (Dr); “On Fairness and Efficiency. The Privatisation of the Public Income over the Past Millinium” [2000] The Policy Press.
ISBN: 1-86134-221-7.

G’day Bill,
I must defend Jo on this. The email I sent her on this was timed at 12:24pm, and I assume she at least started thinking about her response soon afterwards. I didn’t consider posting a reply until I’d read all the replies to date, and had nothing to add when I found yours.
I appreciate the h/t, and often find that others get one using earlier links than I’ve been able to provide. I’m sure she intended no slight.
Cheers
Dave B

“An award-winning Victorian solar company has laid off just over half of its staff after the Victorian Government placed a temporary freeze on a solar panel rebate program.’ Say, dead-hand of guvuhmint award-winning candy ain’t no substitute for Real-McCoy energy.

Bill, back before hazelwood when they were agitating for its shutdown I was calling for a fossil fuel generation strike by all fossil fuel generators, just to show the politicians what happens without hydrocarbon/carbon energy. Let’s make the country live on renewable energy alone for a week.

What will happen when there is full market penetration and all the customers for solar panels have had them installed?
Presumably more subsidies for the erstwhile installers to go round cleaning them?
At night the gas generators will have to start up or electricity come from a neihbouring state.
How much does it cost to ramp the gas generators up and down,both as regards cash and CO2 production?

Dr. Finkel put the running cost of ‘gas generators’ i.e. Open Cycle Gas Turbines (or peaker plants to reneweconomy readers) at $135 per MWh. Not counting the maintenance which can put them out of action for 85% of the time (rapid response means thermal stress cracking).
As for emissions the figures depend on the fuel – with natural gas and the latest, more efficient OCGTs the CO2 emissions are around 600kg per MWh. With diesel fuel and older types (as in SA) the emissions are at least 700 & perhaps as high as 740 kg per MWh.

Old black coal coal fired stations are between 900 and 980 Kg /MWh CO2. The newest types, as being installed by the Chinese and Americans are around 700-740, but their reliability is far, far better and the cost of their electricity much, much lower.

How long do you reckon solar panels stay efficient in the Aussie climate, as I understood that they do not like very hot weather?

They lose efficiency from about 33°C with losses/inefficiency max-ing out at just over 42°C. At that temperature, the inverters also drop out, and the panels are supposedly very inefficient. Neat, eh?

Even neater, the lifetime of these panels is c. 25 years. They probably can’t be recycled (unlike earlier panels) so they will have to be stacked up in the desert to form very flashy hills, visible from space like the Great Wall.

Given the efficiency vs temperature figures, it’s my guess that frequent and prolonged visits to around 40°C – or more, would be likely to prematurely age them. They are made in China, after all, and given a 25 year absolute life time …

23 Apr: HinduBusinessLine: With renewable energy down, jobs are out
by M Ramesh
Be it wind or solar, low tariffs are affecting capacity addition and employment generation
The wind energy sector has, as expected, turned in a very poor performance for the year 2018-19, with fresh installations of a paltry 1,481 MW.
When the industry recorded a high of 5,400 MW in 2016-17, it was expected to scale further heights in the coming years, but expectations have been badly belied…

Go to the website of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) and you’ll find the proud proclamation that the tariffs were driven to a record low of ₹2.44. The Ministry mindlessly introduced a cap — ₹2.83 a kWhr — above which energy companies could not quote in the tariff-based competitive bids that have become the norm. Then tenders have been cancelled because the tenderer — the government — didn’t like the tariffs it got.

Little wonder, therefore, that the latest round of auctions for 1,200 MW of capacity has attracted poor response. All bids by wind energy companies totalled to about half the tendered capacity. Add to this, the Gujarat government baulking on land allotment — because it wanted the lands for wind plants that will supply energy to it rather than to the Central government — and you have a cocktail of toxic policies, as reflected in the poor performance in 2018-19.
Tulsi Tanti, a doyen of the wind industry and the Chairman of the Indian Wind Turbine Manufacturers Association, doesn’t mince words. “We have suffered in the last two years,” he says…

Rooftop solar is the weakest performing segment in the renewable energy industry, with installations of just around 2.5 GW, way below the target of 40 GW to be achieved by 2022. In all, the renewable energy target of 175 GW by 2022 was estimated to generate 3,00,000 jobs. To reach the target, India must build around 100 GW of wind, solar, biomass and small hydro projects in the next three years.
Regardless of government’s optimism, it is difficult to see the target achieved…https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/specials/clean-tech/with-renewable-energy-down-jobs-are-out/article26924614.ece

Press Reader: from Scottish Daily Mail, 25 April 2019:
Inferno rages at Sir Cameron’s estate
by Annie Butterworth
On Monday afternoon around 70 firefighters spent almost 24 hours battling a huge fire close to Paul’s Hill winds farm near Aberlour in Moray.
The same day on Skye, six fire engines were called to ***Edinbane in the north of the island to fight back flames that threatened another ***wind farm just before 11am…

24 Apr: Scottish Sun: FIRE HELL Moray wildfire ‘shaping up to be biggest UK has seen in years’ as firefighters spend third day battling blaze
Emergency crews were called to the scene near Paul’s Hill wind farm, close to Aberlour, at 2.58pm on Monday
by Katy Pagan
The “aggressive” inferno has been raging on four fronts since Monday, with one stretching for six miles…
—

2 wind farms near Moray and the wind farm on Skye would seem to make 3 wind farms, but who knows.

24 Apr: Reddit/Scotland: Huge fire on Skye (it started more than 12 hours ago and I still see tall flames all along the hills above Edinbane)…
from 19 replies:
14m ago: Update: thanks to some rain and the hard work of firefighters, the fire is controlled now…

7h ago: In the end the world will be uninhabitable. We’re increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by 10ppm every couple years. At that rate, in 400 years, we’ll not have any clouds, allowing the sun to heat up the Earth by 8C globally just from the lack of cloud cover.

5h ago: No, we’re completely not fine. The conservative, fantastical IPCC report that states global temperatures will rise by 2.5C, will still be a world that involves many times more suffering than it does now. The current trend is beyond 6C.
It’s not just a sudden bump. The temperature will progressively rise with each passing year, the effects becoming worse as it continues. We’re already seeing the mass droughts, the climate refugees, and catastrophic extreme weather events. It will only get worse from here on.
Sure, we won’t see the absolute worst, but neither will the subsequent generations, as there will be no limit in the temperature rise until we reach a Venus-like environmental equilibrium…

36m ago:
1) We are already in the “apocalyptic cascade” … it’s too late to avoid it.
2) There is no technological solution to this problem. We need to stop emitting ALL green house gases literally now. Immediately.
Not only that we need to remove 50% of all the GHG we’ve already released … this needs to be on such a huge scale and at huge cost in terms of resources, energy and money that it’s literally not possible. There are no technologies that can do this on the scale needed.https://www.reddit.com/r/Scotland/comments/bh1hvg/huge_fire_on_skye_it_started_more_than_12_hours/

24 Apr: HeraldScotland: Five square miles of Skye forestry and moorland destroyed by wildfire ***’after welding incident’
By Martin Williams
The blaze has affected heath land and forestry plantations near the Edinbane windfarm at Struan…
He said in a social media post: “Large Wildfire on Skye today caused by small piece of metal from welding. Nearly five square miles of forestry and moorland destroyed. Wildfires can travel at incredible speed when fanned by the wind.” …
“Firefighters remain on the scene, working to extinguish the fire.”https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/17595533.five-miles-of-forestry-and-moorland-destroyed-by-skye-wildfire-after-welding-incident/

uhoh…welding:

24 Apr: HeraldScotland: Five square miles of Skye forestry and moorland destroyed by wildfire ***’after welding incident’
By Martin Williams
The blaze has affected heath land and forestry plantations near the ***Edinbane windfarm at Struan…
He said in a social media post: “Large Wildfire on Skye today caused by small piece of metal from welding. Nearly five square miles of forestry and moorland destroyed. Wildfires can travel at incredible speed when fanned by the wind.” …
“Firefighters remain on the scene, working to extinguish the fire.”https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/17595533.five-miles-of-forestry-and-moorland-destroyed-by-skye-wildfire-after-welding-incident/

5 sq miles. That’s out of a mere 639 sq miles for the rather mountainous island. If it’s moving faster than walking pace, then it’s a dangerous blaze, despite the 19th Century clearances having reduced the population significantly.

My (only — and I’m careful to keep it that way!) personal experience with an Oz fire, when the flame front overtook the car, without touching the ground, convinced me that Oz fires are majorly dangerous and the eucalyptus trees make them truly wild.

That was a very scary experience. It was almost thirty years ago; I haven’t and won’t be back to repeat it!

Skye (Isle of) is a very rocky place on the Western coast of Scotland, nothing like Oz. It doesn’t have predominentlyl eucalyptus forests and very few, if any, heat waves.

Actually a year or so ago (there saw one burning in UK I think), I saw was that many windmills actually catch fire . Of course the ABC wont tell you this ‘inconvenient fact’. So they dont need bush fires when they can do it all by themselves..

This “pause” will actually create a feeding frenzy in July. If people realise the largesse has a cap, then those who have not yet taken up the offer will be keen not to miss out once the money starts flowing again.

If Labor win the federal election and push the RET higher then power prices will get a new boost as LGC prices rebound. That makes rooftop solar even more attractive.

On the other hand, if ACP and One Nation manage to get some influence in the senate then that could impair Electricity Bill’s efforts to raise the RET. If RET does not change then the subsidy farms get less income and power prices may flatten out until Liddell closes.

The South Australia (Liberal) Government wants another interstate interconnector, this time to NSW. This, they think, will enable surplus generation from the excessive wind farms to go to NSW so the wind farms aren’t directed to shut down as now. Then when the wind doesn’t blow the coal plants in NSW will keep SA supplied.
They haven’t the funds to pay for it, so expect the Federal Govt. to raise taxes and pay for it.

They don’t seem to realise that NSW is a net importer of electricity and when Liddell shuts down, around the time that the proposed interconnector is built, there won’t be any surplus electricity available in NSW.

Bill, prior to the state election, I talked with the Liberal candidate for Newland in my front yard as he was canvassing for votes. Dr Harvey wanted to know what the most pressing issue I had was and I told him “the price of electricity”. He trotted out his “right mix of sources” mantra and was outright shocked when I scoffed at his suggestion of pumped Hydro at the top of the Spencer Gulf as being an utter waste of our money.

This man has a PhD in medical research…

He has all of the tools to do critical thinking and fact based researching

HE HAS *NO* CLUE, beyond the propaganda mantra about renewables, electricity and climate change…and he’s part of our government.

Thanks Nigel, Recently here in Mayo, there was huge publicity that AGL will build pumped hydro scheme at Kanmantoo. It was endorsed by Rebekha Sharkie the Center Alliance member for Mayo as part of her call for more renewable energy.

I also let the forwarded a copy to the Liberal candidate ( Georgina Downer ) I got a sensible reply from her : “I understand that the Federal Government has contributed funds to this project through ARENA but I am not planning on campaigning on it. You raise some interesting criticisms. Thanks ”

There is hope !

But we do need to be able to present solid factual based arguments to counter the bloody propaganda

Don’t you just love the expression “award-winning”? Someone should hand out an industry award for inventing the best industry award name. Then they can give an industry award to the someone who thought of that. Which would be me!

This is from an actual customer of Sky Energy Systems, writing on Product Review:

Really pushy and the salesman knew less than I did about the products he was selling. I opted for a seraphim system with SMA which I was assured was the best they had. Price seemed OK so went ahead.

Was let down on two installation dates and then when the panels turned up after some googling found out they are the cheapest ones from the seraphim company not quality as was stated.

Cheap company and cheap service.

Around here people, including me, have lived with solar over years (though nobody pays to get off the grid and on to solar – it goes the other way.) You have to be prepared to spend on quality items and you have to maintain, maintain, maintain. Because when all you have is solar you notice when things don’t work properly. Maybe with the grid for backup and lots of subsidies you can set and forget. In that case, you win, Australia loses.

Solar is niche technology. Niche is French for doghouse. Nothing wrong with doghouses or solar panels. Just don’t pretend they can do what they can’t.

There’s one ‘award-winning’ serfs go for, and that’s the ‘Darwin-Award-fer-getting-it-right,’ survival, trial and error probe and test, worked fer the evolution of species including us, fer guru fear’n guilt controls ‘n indulgences, in the long run, not so much.

There is a plague of solar installers crawling over the continent. Worst since the Chinese Yellow Fluff infestation under Peter Garrett. (It’s thought that some vectors of the Yellow Fluff are now carrying the solar plague. Apparently both pests thrive in warm subsidies.)

Save us, Darwin! (Sorry I made that crack about you marrying your first cousin.)

A 17-Nil hiding in court and they want to appeal…….you got to be joking….

You have to question such a thought process.

The loopy US Dumb-o-crats who have never gotten over the fact they had their rear ends handed to them in a hat, when Trump won, are still looking for any excuse to find anything against the guy….sore losers…..

Watched this sob story tonight. No mention of the “sustainability ” of an industry that cant survive without direct consumer subsidy. Its cheaper than coal power, the fuel is free, yet we need to subsidise it.

25 Apr: Deutsche Welle: Jo Harper: Russian wind power blows hot and cold
Russian hydropower company RusHydro has launched a wind power plant in Russia’s Arctic region. It’s far from a signal that fossil-fuel-hungry Russia is going green, but it’s a start.
Russian company RusHydro has launched a 900-kilowatt (KW) wind power plant in the Arctic settlement of Tiksi in the Yakutia region in Russia’s Far East…

Only 17% of Russia’s electricity is generated from renewables and about 90% of that is from hydropower, a legacy of the Soviet emphasis on huge infrastructure projects. Roughly 68% of Russia’s electricity is generated from thermal power and 16% from nuclear power. Anatoly Chubais, the head of Russia’s Association of Renewable Power Development, says that by 2024 the generation of solar and wind energy in Russia is expected to reach 1%, low in comparison with 17% in the UK or 25% in Germany…

The Tiksi project is designed to become a part of an integrated energy complex that includes a diesel power plant with total capacity of 3.9 MW, a spokesman for the company told DW…
Three unique wind turbines manufactured by Japanese firm Komaihaltec are engineered to operate in temperatures of minus 50 degrees Celsius…
Hydroelectric power provides 51.5 GW of the country’s 53.5 GW of clean energy generation capacity…

A problem encountered by foreign developers has been the high level of local content required to qualify for the highest tariff rates, an essential part of many Russian RES projects’ long-term feasibility. The percentage of Russian-made equipment required to avoid tariff penalties were modest at first, but has risen to 65% for wind farms and small hydro, and 70% for solar…

24 Apr: E&E News: Q&A: Wanted: ‘Legion of lawyers’ to fight climate change
by Ellen M. Gilmer
Two leading environmental law scholars are out with a new trove of recommendations for fighting climate change, and they’re recruiting lawyers to put the plan in action.
Columbia University’s Michael Gerrard and Widener University’s John Dernbach released an extensive playbook this spring designed to assist lawyers and policymakers working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In a hefty 1,000-plus pages, “Legal Pathways to Deep Decarbonization in the United States” explores various strategies for slashing emissions of carbon dioxide and other planet-warming gases. The tome builds upon research from the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project, a global collaboration that focuses on technical approaches to limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius.

Gerrard and Dernbach, who began working on their book in 2015, recruited 59 experts to author different sections. The book discusses efficiency and fuel-switching in buildings; industry and transportation; electricity and fuel decarbonization; carbon capture; and greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide.

Rounding out the detailed chapters is an extensive index of policy recommendations organized for different types of professionals: members of Congress, EPA officials, state legislators, local government leaders and so forth.
“We didn’t want the book just to sit on the shelf,” Gerrard said. “We wanted to see these recommendations implemented.”

And they’re not wasting any time. The book is accompanied by an ambitious action plan to recruit lawyers, many in big law firms, to do pro bono work to advance policy changes.
“I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the number of people that have come to us and said, ‘How can I help with this? How can I help these recommendations happen?’” Dernbach said. “Our interest is in taking that interest and turning it into results.”…

The Environmental Law Institute, which published the book, is hosting a seminar based on its recommendations tomorrow in Washington, D.C.

Gerrard and Dernbach talked to E&E News earlier this month to discuss the project’s origins, their goals and the nitty-gritty policy work they’re advocating…READ ONhttps://www.eenews.net/stories/1060207163

24 Apr: BBC: Australian election: The ‘unlikely’ group calling for climate action
Australia has just experienced its hottest summer and a succession of extreme weather events – making climate policy a key issue in May’s national election. Now one traditionally improbable group is increasingly calling for action: farmers. Gary Nunn reports from Sydney.

“Who better than capitalist conservative farmers to push the government on climate change?” asks Verity Morgan-Schmidt, who grew up on a farm and now heads lobby group Farmers for Climate Action…

Crop farmer Caroline Welsh has had to adapt her wheat and barley farming practices because hotter, drier springs mean the harvest comes earlier. “We’re going from extreme to extreme,” she says…

In October, two experts wrote in The Conversation that “climate denial has been widespread (LINK) among farmers and in the ranks of the National Party, which purports to represent their interests”…

Another farmer-led pressure group, Lock the Gate, formed in 2010 to deal with coal miners and gas drillers who wanted to mine on farms. National co-ordinator Carmel Flint says: “They felt they had no legal rights, so decided to lock their gates to coal and gas companies.”…

Ms Welsh has a message for those seeking election in May: “Don’t go down in history as those in power who made the wrong decisions for the planet. If we throw money, resources and brains collectively at this, we could change things.”https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-47890319

Having been around farmers for years I’ve only struck one that believed in this garbage but it seems there’s a new generation that have thrown out the old weather records in favour of the good word from the greens .
Let’s face it subsidy farming is a lot more profitable for little effort .

24 Apr: KTVA: Anchorage sees snowiest April in years
By Aaron Morrison
As winter breathes what will likely be its last sigh across Southcentral, it does so by dumping more snow over a seven day period than Anchorage has seen in many weeks. Not only that, but the city also saw its longest stretch of days with snow on record this late in the season…
The 8.6 inches of snow falling this month is enough to place this April in the top 12 snowiest Aprils on record, pushing our seasonal total to 64.5 inches of snow…

Anchorage wasn’t the only one shattering records this month in snowfall totals, as Nome is closing in only nearly 110 inches of snow just for the season. It’s the seventh snowiest season on record, with five of those records occurring since 2000. A big reason for the increased snow over Western Alaska ***can be attributed to the loss of sea ice, which provides more moisture for incoming storms to work with…https://www.ktva.com/story/40361890/anchorage-sees-snowiest-april-in-years

25 Apr: UK Times: Hot spell ends with a bang
The rash of thundery downpours yesterday came from storms drawn up from Spain and France. Today there will be more widespread rain and breezier conditions streaming in from a depression in the Atlantic. And by the weekend temperatures are expected be 10C lower than Easter, and there could even be gales along western coasts. Perhaps more shocking is the return of frost for some places and the prospect of snow on high ground on the tops of the Pennines and mountains of Scotland…

24 Apr: UK Express: UK weather forecast: SHOCK chart shows UK in ICY grip by weekend as storms hit
By Freddie Jordan
Temperatures by Saturday could be up to six-eight degrees colder than the average for the time of year…

25 Apr: Accuweather: Winter is not done yet: Snow to streak across north-central US this weekend
By Alex Sosnowski
Old Man Winter still has a few tricks up his sleeve and will reveal one of those tricks across parts of the northern Plains and Great Lakes region in the form of snow this weekend.
A storm from the Pacific Ocean will travel just south of the United States/Canada border.
Some snow will fall first on the southern parts of British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, as well as portions of northern Montana from Thursday night to Friday…

“It is possible that enough snow falls to cover non-paved surfaces and perhaps even make some roads and sidewalks slushy and slippery from parts of the Dakotas to portions of southern and central Minnesota, central and southern Wisconsin and the Lower Peninsula of Michigan,” according to AccuWeather Meteorologist Courtney Travis…

Tasmania’s in for snow to 900 m with freezing gale force winds, while Fiordland, NZ is always cold, wet, freezing, with snow for the next 4 days gradually lowering to 900 m with sub-zero wind chill. Maybe those young wokettes, Greta and AOC, have finally accomplished what Obama claimed he’d done years ago… or maybe not.

more and more, it seems to me, urban thermometers, and hundreds of millions more people in urban areas, is all that is keeping the CAGW scam going:

18 Apr: BBC: Climate change: Where we are in seven charts and what you can do to help
By Nassos Stylianou, Clara Guibourg, Daniel Dunford and Lucy Rodgers
2. The year 2018 set all sorts of records
The concern is that such hot and cold weather fronts are being blocked – stuck over regions for long periods – more frequently because of climate change, leading to more extreme weather events…

(UHI? UHI? UHI?)
5. Urban areas are particularly under threat
And it’s the faster-growing cities that are most at risk, including megacities like Lagos in Nigeria and Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Some 84 of the world’s 100 fastest-growing cities face “extreme” risks from rising temperatures and extreme weather brought on by climate change…https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46384067

“The concern is that such hot and cold weather fronts are being blocked – stuck over regions for long periods – more frequently because of climate change, leading to more extreme weather events…” fool statements like that have ZERO scientific evidence and are made willy nilly to the gullible.
“The year 2018 set all sorts of records” yes, nearly ALL were record COLD.

“Thousands of emperor penguin chicks drowned when the sea-ice on which they were being raised was destroyed in severe weather. The catastrophe occurred in 2016 in Antarctica’s Weddell Sea… Dr Fretwell said: “The sea-ice that’s formed since 2016 hasn’t been as strong… So there’s been some sort of regime change.”

What? Regime change? International politricks? Of course it is, read on: “The BAS team believes many adults have either avoided breeding in these later years or moved to new breeding sites across the Weddell Sea. A colony some 50km away, close to the Dawson-Lambton Glacier, has seen a big rise in its numbers”. Brilliant observation, Dr Fretwell & Co. And now for the clincher –

“Quite why the sea-ice platform on the edge of the Brunt shelf has failed to regenerate is unclear. There is no obvious climate signal to point to in this case; atmospheric and ocean observations in the vicinity of the Brunt reveal little in the way of change” but but but “the impact that future warming in Antarctica could have on emperor penguins” blah blah send us money etc. Always that ‘future’ bogeyman thingy whatsit.

At least I learned a new word today from this settled science nonsense article: refugia, noun (plural) Biology,
an area in which a population of organisms can survive through a period of unfavorable conditions, especially glaciation. Origin 1950s: from Latin, literally ‘place of refuge.’

Bill, would appear all that hot water / volcanic area is ‘across the bay’ on the other side of the Weddell Sea where the Peninsula reaches north to South America. I do enjoy soaking in thermal hot pools but sailing south, way south, to do it sure ain’t on my top 10 list. Besides, penguins stink, I’ve been told.

This one deals with “Appalachian Mountains and coastal plain” and millipede genus Narceus. Old [1960ish] geography text books used the Red Maple & moose (I think it was) as examples. I was raised on the edge of the Appalachian region and went to college there. Instructors were interested in the idea then.
There are many others, once you have the term refugia to search with.

Cheers John (and Bill). Drove north through and along the Appalachians and Blue Ridge Mtns 30 years ago – your engineers know how to make fine mountain roads, lovely in off-season – and on another roadie spent 3 summer days floating down the Shenandoah River (too much John Denver on the radio as a kid?) with American friends. Thought we’d travelled quite a ways with all those switch-back river turns, yet when we finally hauled out we were only down the road from where we started. Besides, the beer had run out and we were thirty lads & ladies.

Regarding refugium / refugia, the word is kind of self-explanatory, yet I was intrigued by my dictionary’s use of unfavorable conditions, especially glaciation as an example of something to seek refuge from when Dr Fretwell (such a fitting name) used it in reference to pingus in Antarctica. Most of us here understand too much cold for far too long is not a good thing, while dem woke folk seem hell-bent on taking us back to the chiller. Talking of freezing snow, here’s some pics of Tasmania’s Mt Mawson today with more-than-a-dusting down to the public shelter huts. How come no protesters are out there screeching about the weather – http://mtmawson.info/snow-cam/

What amazes (or annoys me mostly) is that all studies of these areas HAVE to come up with some nonsense crap about how its all due to ‘climate change’ without any proof. None required of course. You can tell these researchers , a few probably, dont believe it but are REQUIRED to mention it to get any funding for their research work.

Making money in Australia increasing means being a better lobbyist for government masters, not being a better producer of things Australians need or want.

“Making money” pertains to “being a better producer of things Australians need or want”. “Making money” means creating the values for which others are willing to trade values they have created. Each party of the trade win.

The “Money” is not wealth, it is simply a medium of exchange who’s value depends upon the existence of the values traded that had to be created before they could be exchanged.

The government masters take, by force or fraud, the wealth created by the producers and gives it to those who didn’t create it. No new value is created. In fact value is destroyed by the process. This is largely because the creators of that wealth no longer are able to use the wealth THEY created to create still more wealth.

In effect, the government has taken that portion of the life the producer spent creating the wealth. This diminishes the right to life of all of us. It is irrelevant that it is a legal fiction of due process that theft is intended to be for the greater good of the collective. How can the bad for each and every individual be the good for the collective which exists only as an association of individuals? It cannot be.

This is especially true for government who wants to eat their cake, your cake, and everyone’s cake and complains there is not enough cake to eat. As in “the rich must pay their fair share”. How much is fair: always and forever MORE! Who are the rich? Anyone who works and earns is living.

Tristan Edis makes the fundamental error in his analysis that intermittents generated energy has value:

Green Energy’s Tristan Edis said these challenges are likely to push required PPA prices more towards $55/MWh in time.

The value to the network is negative. He states that coal plants make money at $40/MWh so even at contract price of $55/MWh plus the current $33/MWh for the LGC, intermittent generation is more than twice that of coal.

He rightly points out that investment in grid scale intermittents will dry up until another coal plant shuts down. That is of course without the “policy certainty” that Labor is offering by raising the RET and thereby boosting the LGC price. That will get the subsidy farmers ploughing again.

Wind turbines are the most useless pieces of tech crap ever unleashed (not least incl vast solar panel arrays). Each one contains nearly as much copper than 1 hydro or coal generator plus other rare earths, OH yes they are so plentiful we can build enough windmills to cover the state of Alaska or the entire interior of Australia, how about the whole Sahara? Which is what you’d need for world energy needs.

“Clearly a problem for utility-scale renewable growth at these prices is that old, debt-free coal-fired plants operate profitably at $40/MWh.

“They also keep churning away when the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining, a trait retailers are prepared to pay for.

“As they say in the industry: “thermal plants burn fossil fuels, renewables burn cash” — at least in their formative years.

“I think you’d be very hard pressed to find a power retailer willing to offer 10 to 15-year PPAs at $55/MWh to either a wind or solar project without policy change, or until another coal-fired power station keels over,” Mr Edis said.

…..Um….coal plants dont keel over, they get shut down by politicians making coal so expensive they cant operate….

“However, Mr Edis said there are plenty of investors prepared to accept low returns, particularly with long-term bond yields bumping along not much above zero.

“From what I hear, both wind and solar need similar PPA prices somewhere in the realm between $45/MWh — at a real stretch and a very good project — to $55/MWh, providing the contract is for 10 years plus and involves a low credit risk offtaker [customer].

“This does entail low equity returns, but it seems there are renewable energy project investors out there willing to accept these low returns if the offtaker is considered to be financially robust,” Mr Edis said.

…………….

“Right now, something’s got to give.
Committed and contracted renewables are expected to contribute an additional 30,000 MWh to the national electricity market by 2021, and at the same time demand is forecast to fall by around 6,000 MWh.

“In other words, supply looks likely to outstrip demand by around 24,000 MWh.
That will keep a lid on prices and make investors increasingly nervous.

It just go worse for renewables, from the ABC
Long-term power purchasing agreements for large scale renewable generators have fallen 30pc in the past 5 years
AEMO has slashed the prices paid to many more remote renewable generators
A wave of new projects, equivalent to two Hazelwood plants, will start in the next two years leading to a large oversupply imbalance.

Naah! Those downticks are for where you incorrectly quote two new Hazelwoods as additions, blindly copying the journalist who thinks Nameplate is the same, because two new Hazelwood Nameplate is the equivalent of 0.6 additional Hazelwoods in actual power generation.

Incorrectly quote? i did not change the wording so it is a correct quote.
As to capacity factor, I understand it to be the average production for a wind turbine, meaning that it could produce up to 90% of nameplate on occasion, or nothing.

There seems to be some discrepancy here. Only the unbiased NoTricksZone is promoting this. All the other sites are reporting capacity factors of around 20% for onshore, and around 35% for offshore for the same period.

Yes, but your electricity supply has reliability mandates, around 20 hours of outage (downtime) per year or 0.23% downtime, 99.77% uptime.

So what is important is electricity generation at 99.7% reliability. Solar generates zero watts at 99.7% reliability , wind is mostly zero watts and no more than 1% of nameplate at that reliability.

Capacity factor is a long term average but you don’t actually use electricity on a yearly average. Reliable uptime is the dominant factor, that is, what is the maximum energy that can be supplied 99.77% of the time.

To the point though, investment is moving away from wind and solar as their economic model has been badly damaged by AEMO. In short, they will now have to compete directly against coal. I would have thought that the commentators on this site would have been cheering such a decision as it is what was being demanded as late as yesterday. Sigh, mabe WUWT will do a post, and then the cheering can begin.

Good point. Instead of tipping endless amounts of dough (earned with coal exports) into wasteful green fairy floss we need to spend on nice new coal power plants for ourselves. USC for sure. Love the Hitachis!https://www.mhps.com/products/conventional/

Wrong again, the investment has already been made in precipitators and other filtering tech that removes almost all the pollutants from coal plant exhaust so those externalities HAVE been accounted for.

25 Apr: GreentechMedia: Tesla Suffers Deep Q1 Loss as Solar Installs Continue to Plummet
by Eric Wesoff
Solar struggles, storage limited by cell production
Tesla talks a good game about its residential solar and energy storage business, allowing customers to purchase “directly from our website, in standardized increments of capacity. We aim to put customers in a position of cash generation after deployment with only a $99 deposit upfront. That way, there should be no reason for anyone not to have solar generation on their roof.”

But the quarterly solar numbers paint a story of a deteriorating business, despite any brave claims to the contrary. Energy generation and storage revenue in Q1 decreased by 13 percent over Q4 2018, driven by a severe decline in solar deployments that fell from 73 megawatts to 47 megawatts, down about 36 percent quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year. Gross margin of the solar and storage business in Q1 dropped to 2.4 percent.

Tesla, and before that SolarCity, has not deployed as low a figure as Q1′s 47 megawatts in more than five years — when solar was considerably more expensive than it is today. Data from Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables shows that Tesla’s residential installation volumes nearly halved from 650 megawatts in 2016 to 352 megawatts in 2017, and fell again last year to 208 megawatts…

25 Apr: TheConversation: Should we turn the Sahara Desert into a huge solar farm?
by Amin Al-Habaibeh, Professor of Intelligent Engineering Systems, Nottingham Trent University
(Disclosure statement: Amin Al-Habaibeh receives funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and European Commission)

Given the Sahara covers about 9m km², that means the total energy available – that is, if every inch of the desert soaked up every drop of the sun’s energy – is more than 22 billion gigawatt hours (GWh) a year.
This is again a big number that requires some context: it means that a hypothetical solar farm that covered the entire desert would produce 2,000 times more energy than even the largest power stations in the world, which generate barely 100,000 GWh a year. In fact, its output would be equivalent to more than 36 billion barrels of oil per day – that’s around five barrels per person per day. In this scenario, the Sahara could potentially produce more than seven times the electricity requirements of Europe, with almost no carbon emissions…

But one of the drawbacks is that when the panels get too hot their efficiency drops. This isn’t ideal in a part of the world where summer temperatures can easily exceed 45℃ in the shade, and given that demand for energy for air conditioning is strongest during the hottest parts of the day. Another problem is that sand storms could cover the panels, further reducing their efficiency.
Both technologies might need some amount of water to clean the mirrors and panels depending on the weather, which also makes water an important factor to consider…https://theconversation.com/should-we-turn-the-sahara-desert-into-a-huge-solar-farm-114450

As well the climate change believing, animal loving, anti racist, fossil fuel hating lefties would have to choose which hat to wear. For example, if someone wanted to drill in some tiny part of the sahara for oil, the lefties would be protesting all over the world, displaced people, some animal would become extinct, climate change etc etc etc. But if someone wanted to cover the whole Sahara desert with solar panels to produce “free” energy for Europe, that would be OK because it would be doing it’s part to stop climate change

25 Apr: BusinessGreen: Repower old onshore wind farms to meet climate targets, UK government urged
by Michael Holder
The UK must ensure it replaces older onshore wind farms with newer turbines as they reach the end of their operational lives if it is to secure enough low-cost power capacity to meet climate change targets, RenewableUK has warned…

The UK’s first commercial wind farms were developed in the 1990s and built to operate for around 20-25 years. Moreover, analysis by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) last year highlighted around 750 turbines across almost 60 UK sites installed around the turn of the millennium which are scheduled to reach the end of their operational lives in the next five years…
A report today by the trade body explains that more than 8GW of existing onshore wind capacity, which currently generates nearly a fifth of the UK’s renewable electricity output, could be retired over the next two decades.

The group added that new policies are therefore needed to enable the replacing or ‘repowering’ of these older turbines as they reach the end of their operational lives, such as setting a framework to encourage councils to grant planning permission for such projects.

The report warns the UK faces a low carbon electricity generation gap of up to 18 per cent of current demand by 2030, and that if the government fails to support ‘repowering’ or replacing existing onshore wind turbines that gap could grow even wider…

25 Apr: Reuters: Britain must commit to carbon capture to meet climate goals – lawmakers
by Susanna Twidale
“Carbon capture usage and storage (CCUS) will be necessary to meet the UK’s existing climate change targets at least cost, the report by the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Committee said…
The BEIS Committee report said CCUS technology would be vital for a zero target to be met.
“Failure to deploy CCUS would also mean the UK could not credibly adopt a ‘net zero emissions’ target” the report said…
There are fewer than 20 large-scale CCSU projects in operation globally but many more will be needed to meet the challenge of climate change, according to the International Energy Agency…https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-carboncapture/britain-must-commit-to-carbon-capture-to-meet-climate-goals-lawmakers-idUSKCN1S02XL

25 Apr: EnergyVoice: Updated: Union anger as UK energy minister ‘unable to attend’ wind summit
by David McPhee
The Scottish Government said earlier this month that Ms Perry was due to co-host the summit with Scottish Finance Secretary Derek Mackay on May 2.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon vowed to convene the summit in March after troubled Scottish firm Burntisland Fabrication (BiFab) was overlooked in favour of two foreign rivals for a multi-million contract for a giant 100-turbine Moray Firth wind development.
The UK department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) said Ms Perry would be unable to attend due to other “diary commitments”…

24 Apr: ING: Counting the cost of a low carbon economy
Wind and solar power will need a $13 trillion investment over 30 years to reach emissions targets, as demand for power doubles
by Gerben Hieminga
•The potential for private investment is dependent on public investment: additional grid investment is needed to accommodate the increased power demand and volatility of supply…

As a result, power demand increases from around 27,000 TWh currently to 57,000 TWh by 2050 in ING’s Positive Tech scenario. To put this in perspective, power demand in 2040 is 9,000 TWh higher in our scenario compared to the well-known Sustainable Development scenario from the International Energy Agency, which has a planning horizon to 2040 instead of 2050…

Solar needs more capacity than wind
Since the sun does not always shine and the wind can be unpredictable, more capacity is needed to steadily produce 19,000 TWh each. In other words, these two sources of energy are less efficient than oil and gas…

Solar, on the other hand, needs almost four times as much capacity to generate the same amount of power as gas and coal fired power plants. This is because of the obvious problem that the sun does not shine at night and panels produce less power on cloudy days.

I don’t think that Fitz has identified Mercury pollution yet, so you have provided him with a reference. Maybe not a very good one.

“There are just four power stations in the country that we’re aware of that haven’t fitted fine-particle bag filters and they jump off the charts in terms of fine particle pollution,” Dr Whelan said.
“Three of them are in Victoria and the other one is in Queensland.
“There are two things stopping power stations from fitting these fine-particle emissions controls. The first thing is that governments aren’t asking them to.”
Cost is the other factor. But any cost-benefit analysis needs to factor in the impacts on health, Dr Whelan said.

The primary issue at the start of the article was Mercury Pullution! Is that contained by Fine Particel bag filters? That was not made clear.

The articel then went on to enumerate various illness caused by pollution. Not one of them is linked to Mercury AFAIK.

“A separate 2013 independent assessment of mercury emissions from coal-fired power station in NSW also found that there is a significant margin of safety and emissions would need to be 10,000 times higher to result in concentrations higher than health guidelines“

Not really, brown coal has a higher water content, which means it burns cooler. This reduces the thermal efficiency of the generator. Kg for kg brown coal and black coal emit the same pollution but you get less electricity from the brown coal.

There are some plants that use waste heat to remove the water from the brown coal which delivers efficiencies similar to black coal.

26 Apr: ABC Breakfast: Science with Tegan Taylor: Caffeine giving solar cells a boost
Scientists working on a particular type of solar cells have found caffeine boosted the ability of cells to convert light into energy…

26 Apr: ABC Breakfast: Australia’s forgotten drought
As Queensland farmers celebrate their most significant rainfall in years, WA graziers are bracing for a tough year ahead…
Some farmers in WA’s mid-west, who have been forced to destock after several dry years, believe they’ve been overlooked in Australia’s “forgotten drought”.

the last two ABC Big Ideas – an hour that will be repeated, of course:

25 Apr: ABC Big Ideas: New rules of war
What is the future of war? Do corporations, mercenaries, and rogue states now hold more power than the nation-states? The strategies of conventional wars don’t work in a world of disorder: global terrorism, international criminal empires, climate change, dwindling natural resources and bloody civil wars. But the US armed forces have failed to adapt to the new conditions.
The New Rules of War: Victory in the Age of Durable Disorder presented by the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. 13 March 2019
Speaker
Sean McFate – Professor of strategy, National Defense University and Georgetown University; Think tank scholar at the RAND Corporation, Atlantic Council, Bipartisan Policy Center and New America Foundation…

24 Apr: ABC Big Ideas: What’s on the menu in 2050?
Climate change is causing havoc for Australian food producers.
Then there’s consumer concerns about how food is produced.
And the pressure to feed a growing population.
So how are Australian farmers responding and will indigenous foods form a greater part of our diet? ..
What’s on the menu in 2050? recorded 24 March 2019 World Science Festival…
Speakers
Fiona Simson – President National Farmers’ Federation
Indigenous chef – Mark Olive
Craig Heraghty – National Agribusiness Leader PricewaterhouseCoopers
Nina Fedoroff – molecular biologist and senior science advisor to OFW Law Washington

however, not an ABC word about Senvion despite their large footprint in Australia:

Workers Sent Home as Contractor Files for Insolvency
Magic1059 – 15 Apr 2019
Workers at the $480 million Lincoln Gap wind farm near Port Augusta have been sent home after International contractor Senvion filed for self-administration proceedings…
The CFMEU says it had up to 100 members on the project that have been stood down with no word on when they can go back to work…
This devastating blow follows the collapse of SolarReserve’s proposed $650 million Aurora solar thermal project in Port Augusta.

12 Apr: RenewEconomy: Australian wind project owners worried as Senvion faces insolvency
The situation has raised concerns for projects and workers in Australia using Senvion technology, or where it is the contractor, including the 212MW Lincoln Gap wind project near Port Augusta in South Australia and the huge Murra Warra development in Victoria.
In Australia, Senvion has installed more than 470MW of wind energy generation, with a further 430MW under construction as at September 2018…

25 Apr: Ecoreporter Germany: Senvion: Supervisory board members take their hat
The share of the wind turbine manufacturer is currently listed on the Xetra stock exchange at 1.10 euros… The Senvion share is still a risky paper. Investors should watch the further development of the wind turbine manufacturer from the sidelines…

The forecast for Bells was around 4 meters. Contest organisers called the biggest sets at around 4.5 meters.

So Bill, it looks like the BOM were spot on with their forecast. Your continual BOM and ABC bashing is making you look a bit of a dill.

Peter C, conditions were far from excellent. With WSW winds gusting to around 40 knots the swell was extremely lumpy and uneven but still contestable.

As for nothing out of the ordinary comment, you will get swells this size only two or three times a year. As far as the comp goes only two years, 1964 and 1981 have seen bigger surf. There was an exceptional volume of water moving across the reef and the water safety guys had to come to the assistance of a couple of surfers who were in danger of being dragged over the Winkipop Button.
Italo Ferriera said later “It was the craziest moment I’ve ever been in.”

Several boards were broken and at least one leg rope plug was ripped out of the board.

BBC seems to have ignored this so far, but Guardian, HuffPo, Mirror & a couple of others are beating it up:

25 Apr: UK Independent: Liam Fox accused of ‘staggering’ ignorance after appearing to legitimise climate change denial
Cabinet minister later clarified remarks after coming under fire for suggesting the science was up for debate
by Lizzy Buchan
The international trade secretary was forced to row back after he told MPs that even those who did not accept the “current scientific consensus” on climate change should consider how resources are used.
His remarks were denounced by Labour as providing “weasel excuses for climate deniers”, and sit at odds with environment secretary Michael Gove’s promise to meet climate activists from Extinction Rebellion, who have held protests across London.

Speaking in the Commons, Dr Fox said: “It’s important that we take climate issues seriously.
“Whether or not individuals accept the current scientific consensus on the causes of climate change, it is sensible for everyone to use finite resources in a responsible way.”

Shadow international trade secretary Barry Gardiner said his comments were “not acceptable behaviour from a cabinet minister”.
“It is shameful that in the week when a sixteen year old school child has educated MPs with such clarity about the climate emergency we face, we have a cabinet minister showing confusion and ignorance on such a staggering scale,” he said.
“The government needs to act with the urgency that the science demands, not provide weasel excuses for climate deniers.”

Wera Hobhouse, Liberal Democrat climate change spokesperson, echoed his concerns over the government acting as “apologists for climate change denial”.
She said: “In a week where protesters have filled the streets of London and activist Greta Thunberg has visited parliament, it is outrageous that Liam Fox is now legitimising those who deny climate change.”

26 Apr: UK Spectator: Liam Fox falls foul of the climate change cult
by Ross Clark
A question has come to me from a test paper in the A-level for 21st century ethics. Read the following statement and explain what is wrong with it: ‘It’s important that we take climate issues seriously. Whether or not individuals accept the current scientific consensus on the causes of climate change, it is sensible for everyone to use finite resources in a responsible way.’

The correct answer, it turns out, is that the statement allows for the possibility that failing to accept the scientific consensus on climate change is somehow a legitimate position for an individual to hold, when of course it is not. The person making the statement should have made it clear that everyone must accept scientific consensus on climate change as well as use resources wisely – not be allowed to opt out of one of these essential duties as human beings.

That, at any rate, appears to be the view of Barry Gardiner, the international trade secretary and Wera Hobhouse, who goes about with the title of the Liberal Democrats’ climate change spokeswoman. The statement above was in fact made by International Trade Secretary Liam Fox yesterday, and was immediately denounced by the opposition…READ ALLhttps://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/04/liam-fox-falls-foul-of-the-climate-change-cult/

25 Apr: ClimateChangeNews: ‘A town needs its self-respect’: new coal mine to open in the UK
Coal mining left Whitehaven in 1986, now it is about to return, bringing promises of jobs and division
By Sophie Yeo for DeSmog UK
Their line of thinking is that the consumption of coal is driven by demand; coal produced on the shores of Cumbria and used in the UK and Europe would simply displace coal mined further afield, from regions like Appalachia in the USA. The emissions saved by not having to ship this coal halfway around the world are therefore counted as emissions reductions in the county’s final analysis, to the tune of 5.3 million tonnes.

But what swung the decision was the opportunities it created for local residents.
West Cumbria Mining estimated in its planning application that, when running at full production, the Woodhouse Colliery would provide around 500 jobs…
But it was enough to secure the almost unanimous support of local politicians from the Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative parties…

And there is undoubtedly support for the mine.
On the day I visit Whitehaven, the local newspaper includes two letters championing the development. “A town needs its self-respect,” writes Jeremy Godwin of Penrith, in The Whitehaven News. “Mining is a calling that some have and others don’t. ***Those who oppose it on the grounds of climate change are forecasting what might not occur. Were they to prevail, Whitehaven would remain in its ebb-tide, hard-up, and dejected.”…https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/04/25/town-needs-self-respect-new-coal-mine-open-uk/

They should do the same for welsh steaming coal instead of getting it from Siberia.
There are enough Steam Engines on preserved railways to provide a steady demand and save all that foreign exchange as well as transport costs.

25 Apr: Science Mag: E&E News: Facebook fact-checker has ties to climate doubt
by Scott Waldman
Facebook’s newest fact-checking partner is connected to an enterprise that was founded by a conservative Fox News host and that routinely promotes climate doubt.
The social media giant is partnering with CheckYourFact.com to provide third-party oversight of news on its platform, Facebook announced last week. Check Your Fact is an affiliate of The Daily Caller, the right-leaning news outlet co-founded by Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

Climate scientists and advocates are worried that the new partnership means climate articles will be downplayed on Facebook…
The climate stories published by The Daily Caller create a false impression of the level of certainty about human-caused global warming within the climate science field, said Susan Joy Hassol, director of the science outreach nonprofit group Climate Communication.
In particular, The Daily Caller has mastered a form of partial truth-telling that isn’t technically wrong but doesn’t give the full picture, either, she said.
“You can really mislead people without outright lying, and in a way that’s more dangerous,” she said. “You can’t prove it false; you can’t say what they’ve said is inaccurate, that it’s a lie; you can’t say any of that. Then somebody would have to say it’s true — well, it’s not true because it’s not the whole truth.”

Many of its stories are produced by the staff of the Daily Caller News Foundation, which receives funding from the Charles Koch Foundation, as well as a number of other conservative foundations that fund groups that attack climate science.
Check Your Fact is wholly owned by The Daily Caller, and its work is routinely promoted by the news organization. While it is editorially independent and has its own staff, Check Your Fact receives funding from both The Daily Caller, as well as the Daily Caller News Foundation, according to the company.

Joel Kaplan, a vice president at Facebook and a former White House aide to President George W. Bush, pushed for the company to partner with The Daily Caller for about a year, The Wall Street Journal reported last year. Kaplan, who is an ally of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, has sought changes at Facebook amid complaints by some conservatives that the company is biased against them.

Check Your Fact is one of just six organizations that Facebook currently lists as fact-checkers in the United States. The others include Pulitzer Prize winners such as the Associated Press and PolitiFact. All of the fact-checkers have passed an assessment test implemented by the Poynter Institute’s International Fact-Checking Network…

The Daily Caller, for its part, has a long history of giving its readers the impression that climate science is largely a political fight, rather than a rigorous scientific inquiry…
Just this week, the news organization published a piece that called into doubt the accuracy of climate models. The piece claimed that “many climate scientists are skeptical of the extreme warming predicted by next-generation climate models.” The article cited a few skeptical researchers but did not sample the far greater range of researchers who have shown that climate predictions from years past have held up to actual observations. Scientists are largely confident in climate models, even as they seek to improve their forecasting of future conditions.
In fact, the American Meteorology Society released a statement on climate change that included praise for the accuracy of climate models.
“Climate models successfully replicate the global warming of the twentieth century, and they agree that further warming and other global and regional changes can be expected this century,” the statement read…

Last fall, when the Trump administration released the National Climate Assessment, The Daily Caller trumpeted a series of headlines that framed the report as a controversial, political document — rather than one crafted over years through the Obama and Trump administrations and that was reliant on dozens of peer-reviewed studies…

In one of its first stories on the report, the news organization relied on University of Colorado scientist Roger Pielke Jr., who believes humans are contributing to climate change but questions links between warming and extreme weather events.
“‘EMBARRASSING’: CLIMATE EXPERT EXPLAINS WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE WHITE HOUSE’S NEW CLIMATE REPORT,” The Daily Caller stated.
After the report was released, President Trump told reporters from Axios, while making an ocean wave motion with his hand, that climate goes up and down.
“Is there climate change? Yeah. Will it go back like this, I mean, will it change back? Probably,” Trump said.
News outlets around the world corrected Trump’s misstatement. The Daily Caller found a different angle: “REPORTERS PRESS TRUMP ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING, HE ANSWERS WITH FACTS.”

One frequent target of The Daily Caller’s reporting is Penn State University climate scientist Michael Mann. He said he was disturbed to hear that Facebook is giving the outlet a much broader platform on which to attack climate science.
“It is truly disturbing to hear that Facebook, already known to be a dubious organization with an ethically challenged CEO, is partnering with ‘Daily Caller,’ which is essentially a climate change-denying Koch Brothers front group masquerading as a media outlet,” he said. “If they fail to cease and desist in outsourcing their ‘fact-checking’ to this bad faith, agenda-driven outlet, they will face serious repercussions.”…

Hassol, the climate communications expert, said allowing The Daily Caller network and Check Your Fact to have oversight of news on a platform notorious for spreading false information is “a nightmare.”
She worried that the platform could play a major role in highlighting climate uncertainty.
“All they have to do is introduce a kernel of doubt. That’s been the playbook,” she said. “They don’t have to prove anything. All they have to do is create doubt and leave people questioning.”https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/04/facebook-fact-checker-has-ties-news-outlet-promotes-climate-doubt

26 Apr: Irish Times: Climate change reporting should be obligatory
Government spends €4m on road safety ads and nothing on climate change
by John Gibbons
(John Gibbons is an environmental writer and commentator)
By any objective standards, the global climate and biodiversity crisis should be front page news almost every day. Rationally, you would expect updates on the battle to maintain a habitable biosphere to also be leading most TV and radio news bulletins. We do not, it seems, live in a world governed by reason.

Some years ago, a former editor of Fortune magazine ran a thought experiment: imagine that the world’s scientists had confirmed, with 90 per cent confidence, that a huge meteor would collide with the Earth within a decade. “The media would throw teams of reporters at it and give them the resources needed to follow it in extraordinary depth and detail”, argued Eric Pooley. “After all, the race to stop the meteor would be the story of the century.”

For decades, David Attenborough has revealed the wonders of the natural world to millions. In recent years, his tone has grown dramatically darker. His Blue Planet II series brought the devastating impacts of plastic pollution on the once-pristine oceans forcefully to a global audience, and in so doing, triggered a genuine sea change in public attitudes.
The plastics crisis pales into almost insignificance compared with how carbon dioxide emissions from human actions are drastically altering the very chemistry of the biosphere. Attenborough this week swung his editorial gaze to the wider carbon crunch, with a hard-hitting documentary on BBC titled: Climate change – the facts…

25 Apr: EurActiv: Zero-emission EU industry ‘within reach’ but costly, study says
By Frédéric Simon
Bringing emissions from heavy industry down to net-zero by 2050 is possible but will require costly new production processes and a 25-60% increase in near-term capital investments to reach €40-50 billion per year, according to new research published on Thursday (25 April).
Achieving net-zero emissions for European energy-intensive industries is “within reach” but time is running out, with 2050 only one investment cycle away, says a new study by Material Economics, a consultancy (LINK).

“Different industrial strategies and pathways can be combined to achieve net-zero emissions,” says the study, produced with the Wuppertal institute in Germany and the Institute of European Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels (VUB)…

Just looking at the power sector, the transition to zero-emissions industry will require tripling the amount of electricity production, Cooper said, referring to the VUB/IES study. This is more than estimates by trade association Eurelectric, which says only a doubling of power production will be necessary.

And these costs cannot be borne solely by companies in energy-intensive industries, which are facing fierce competition from within Europe as well as from low-cost countries like China.

This study has been carried out by Material Economics. Wuppertal Institute and the Institute of European Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel assisted with the analysis. The work has been supported by the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), Climate-KIC, the Energy Transitions Commission, the European Climate Foundation, RE:Source, and SITRA. The Steering Group has comprised Martin Porter and Eliot Whittington (CISL), Sira Saccani (Climate-KIC), Adair Turner and Faustine de la Salle (Energy Transitions Commission), Simon Wolf (European Climate Foundation), Johan Felix (RE:Source), and Mika Sulkinoja (SITRA). Research guidance have been provided by Dr. Jonathan Cullen, Prof. Stefan Lechtenböhmer, Prof. Lars J Nilsson, Dr. Clemens Rohde, and Tomas Wyns. The project team has comprised Anders Åhlén, Anna Teiwik, Cornelia Jönsson, Johan Haeger, Johannes Bedoire-Fivel, Michail Pagounis, and Stina Klingvall. We are very grateful for the contributions of these organisations and individuals, as well as the more than 80 other industry experts, researchers, policymakers, and business leaders who have contributed their knowledge and insight to this project.

25 Apr: The Nation: Bill McKibben: The ‘Debate’ Over Global Warming Was Always Phony
But now we have a small window to stave off the worst-case climate-change scenario.
By Jon Wiener (emeritus professor of US history at UC Irvine)
Bill McKibben was one of the first people to warn of the dangers of global warming 30 years ago with his book The End of Nature…
Now he has published a new book, Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? This interview has been edited and condensed…

JW: Your new book, Falter, says things are looking pretty bad for humans right now. But of course there’s an opposing school of thought, which you can find in a dozen books and a hundred TED Talks, that says things are getting better. There’s less infant mortality today, people are living longer…[snip]

Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker says people like you (and me) nevertheless just seem to “bitch, moan, whine, carp and kvetch.”

BM: It’s not that he’s completely wrong. We have made enormous progress on certain things over the last 30 or 40 years, and that makes it all the more tragic that we’re now seeing that progress begin to disappear in the wake of very rapid physical deterioration. In fact, after more than a decade of steady decline in the number of hungry people on earth, that number went up last year — because of climate change and associated natural catastrophes. After a decade of fairly steady decline, the incidents of child labor went up again last year because of climate change and similar shocks that inevitably end up with impoverished families putting kids to work.

Of course, if we keep on current trends, this is only going to get worse—much worse. Look what happened when 2 million migrants left Syria as a result of the civil war there—a civil war that, by the way, was triggered at least in part by the worst drought in the history… [snip]

JW: Let’s talk about what is to be done now to slow the pace of climate change.

ABC news radio seems to air a lot of NPR, so wouldn’t be surprised if this gets aired:

25 Apr: NPR: 8 Ways To Teach Climate Change In Almost Any Classroom
by Anya Kamenetz
NPR/Ipsos conducted a national poll (LINK) recently and found that more than 8 in 10 teachers — and a similar majority of parents — support teaching kids about climate change.
But in reality, it’s not always happening: Fewer than half of K-12 teachers told us that they talk about climate change with their children or students. Again, parents were about the same.
The top reason that teachers gave in our poll for not covering climate change? “It’s not related to the subjects I teach,” 65% said…

The “reality of human-caused climate change” is mentioned in at least 36 state standards, according to an analysis done for NPR Ed by Glenn Branch, the deputy director at the National Center for Science Education. But it typically appears only briefly — and most likely just in earth science classes in middle and high school. And, Branch says, that doesn’t even mean that every student in those states learns about it: Only two states require students to take earth or environmental science classes to graduate from high school.

Joseph Henderson teaches in the environmental studies department at Paul Smith’s College in upstate New York. He studies how climate change is taught in schools and believes it needs to be taught across many subjects…

Global Optimism!!! shame on Figueres and, even moreso, David Attenborough:

26 Apr: Guardian: ‘Outrage is justified’: David Attenborough backs school climate strikers
Exclusive: broadcaster says older generations have done terrible things and should listen to young
by Damian Carrington
In an interview with the former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres, the broadcaster and naturalist dismissed critics of the widely praised global movement of school strikes as cynics.
“[Young people] understand the simple discoveries of science about our dependence upon the natural world,” he said. “My generation is no great example for understanding – we have done terrible things.”
The protests by young people were enormously encouraging, Attenborough said. “That is the one big reason I have for feeling we are making progress. If we were not making progress with young people, we are done.”

[snip]

Figueres, who works with Global Optimism to create social and environmental change, said: “Greta and the other young people are justifiably furious with us. They say we have been at this for 30 years and we still haven’t solved this. Young people are calling us adults to account.”…
[snip]

Gentle mockery is really the only available weapon when opposing points of view based on faith and irrationality –it’s a waste of time and effort to try to reason a person out of a position arrived at without the assistance of reason.

“For these small businesses to survive 15 weeks without sales is unlikely.”

This might as well say,

The consumer is not so stupid as to want to throw away a financial advantage if they can get it.

Here in the once Golden State they think that giving away a “climate credit” twice a year on everyone’s electricity bill will encourage spending the money on energy efficiency improvements. But I’m already more energy efficient than every neighbor around me for miles. I had the house insulated in the 1970s, walls and attic and then double pane windows and door. I could not do much more if I spent 10 times the climate credit on it. But if California is stupid enough to give away money, I’m just “stupid” enough to take it and smile. And if I knew there would be a rebate again for going solar I would be just as “stupid” and wait for the rebate — that is, if I wanted solar in the first place.

Funny thing, human nature, we always try to work things to our advantage. And the only people on Earth who can’t see this are the “geniuses” who haunt the halls of government.

Their “genius” of course, lies in having set up the condition now by offering rebates in the first place. But geniuses are seldom willing to let a free marked make things work about as well as they’re ever going to work.